[bunkerhill7]

Yes thank you for rekindling my memory -Archie, U of Minn- I stand corrected after scores of years and the memory just ain`t that good anymore/ There was also an archival world-wide newspaper database but I forgot the name.

[Traveler59]

Could you be referring to the newsgroups? Those were more like bulletin board messages. The Internet Relay Chat (IRC) was real-time chat long before AOL chat and some of these others. IRC was a black hole for me, I'd start into a chat area and come up for breath several hours later.